One of us in bunny pajamas, and the other one devolving into a curse.
I shoulder his weight again but Grayson is determined to do it himself. He shuffles beside me and we move deeper into the forest around the community, away from the neat rows of houses terrorized by our enemy.
We move until the tree limbs erase even the smallest strands of sunlight overhead. I shiver and my ear burns at the memory of the hunter and the bullets that would have ended things sooner if he’d hit his target.
“I’m sorry,” Grayson manages. “I’m so damn sorry for this.”
“For what?”
“For being useless. For putting you in this position. I know how hard it’s got to be for you.”
He grinds out the rest of the words and I shake my head.
“I made my choice.”
“Why do i feel like I pushed you into it”
His chuckle undoes me because it’s hiding his own flavor of guilt.
“Look, dude, I might have lived my life with my father pulling the strings, but this is a different story. I’m not doing anything I don’t want to do.” Those are pretty words.
I wonder if they’ll ever get easier to believe.
“You don’t owe me anything. And I don’t want you to think of me like some project where you feel beholden to?—”
“Stop it,” I interrupt hotly. “It’s not like that.”
I straighten when he drags his arm free, walking on his own. “Then what’s it like?” he asks.
“I know what it’s like to be an outcast, even when no one else sees it. That’s all.”
The story is incomplete by a mile. I’m not sure what words to use to fill in the blanks yet. Not until we’re out of this and I know there’s a shot at safety.
“It’s not going to be much further. A few miles,” I soothe.
Okay, ten. Or more. Grayson doesn’t need to know. He needs to keep going.
He stumbles and I grab his arm and help him despite his weak protests.
He’s off balance and sweating, mumbling under his breath. How the hell are we going to make it to the witch’s house?
So, I lie the same way I always have.
“You’ve got this. You’re a football player and a damn Boy Scout with a doomsday prepper dad. You’re used to having to push through to score the winning goal when you’ve got a game, right?”
My breath catches in my lungs, the combination of adrenaline and sickness making it hard to breathe.
Grayson is soheavy.
He grunts. “Touchdown,” he corrects.
There we go.
Get him thinking about something else, anything else. I help him move deeper into the forest toward town, toward our destination. The moon madness might be right there knocking at the door and demanding entry, but if RJ and Aimee made it?—
If we can get to them?—
We might have a shot.